HEAD-TO-HEAD COMPETITION: Seattle Times to be published in mornings

SEATTLE (AP) - The Seattle Times, an afternoon newspaper that remained dominant while other afternoon newspapers struggled or even failed, announced Tuesday it will switch to a morning publication and compete head-to-head with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The change will occur within two years as part of a restructured joint operating agreement between the Seattle Times Co. and the Hearst Corp., which owns the Post-Intelligencer. The restructuring gives the Post-Intelligencer a larger share of the JOA's profits and removes barriers that had prevented the Post-Intelligencer from posting news on its Internet site.

"To sustain our success and future growth, it isn't feasible for The Seattle Times to continue publishing an afternoon paper," said Mason Sizemore, president and chief operating officer of The Times.

"We have been successful in bucking the trends with an evening newspaper because of the quality of our product, but we now are at a point where we must respond to the community's clear preference for a morning paper," Sizemore said. "By doing so, we are ensuring that The Seattle Times can continue to thrive as one of America's last locally owned metropolitan newspapers."

Sizemore said no date had been set for the conversion.

"We will start planning immediately," he said. "My hope is that we can do it much sooner than two years."

The Times has a daily circulation of about 230,000 and a Sunday circulation of about 504,000. The P-I has a daily circulation of about 200,000.

Several larger U.S. newspapers publish multiple editions through the day, but The Seattle Times is the nation's largest evening-only paper Monday through Friday. The Times and the Post-Intelligencer both publish morning editions on Saturday. The Times publishes a Sunday morning edition that includes a section produced by the Post-Intelligencer.

JOAs, in which newspapers of different ownership compete editorially but share advertising, circulation and production resources, exist in 16 cities across the United States. In none of them do the newspapers compete head-to-head, although in Detroit The News - while considered an afternoon newspaper - publishes a morning edition that competes in some parts of Michigan with the Detroit Free Press.

"The real winners in this new arrangement are Seattle-area newspaper readers," said J.D. Alexander, editor and publisher of the Post-Intelligencer. "The extension of the agreement combined with the move of The Times to the morning publishing cycle means that Seattle readers can count on two strong, independent editorial voices far into the next century."

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